


Snakepit!

by crfaddis, plingo_kat



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alien Religion, Arena Combat, Giant snakes, Hurt!Kirk, Snakes, Zinedom Archive Project, alien cultures, fanzine fic, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1975-11-01
Updated: 1975-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-29 11:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16743247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crfaddis/pseuds/crfaddis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: Captain Kirk and Nurse Chappel are caught up in dangerous religious activities while trying to trade for medical supplies.





	Snakepit!

**Author's Note:**

> This was first published in the print zines and [Universal Transmitter](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Universal_Transmitter) (1975) and [Rigel](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Rigel) (1977) and then printed again in [Star Trek: The New Voyages](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_New_Voyages) #2 (1978). It was accompanied by art by [Gee Moaven](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Gee_Moaven).
> 
> This story has been posted here at the request of the original creator(s).
> 
> \---
> 
> NOTE: This fanwork is the sole creation of crfaddis who has requested assistance in posting it to AO3. At the end of this process, plingo_kat's name will be removed.

The belligerent heat of Vestalan stuck the brief skirt of her nurse's uniform to her legs with sweat, and Christine Chapel squirmed as decorously as possible while standing "at ease" beside Captain Kirk and in front of the head of the botanical-collections station. Kirk had expertly prodded the administrator into a defensive fury to test the man's honesty, and the cross-fire became intense enough, finally, for Chapel to discretely pull away the clinging fabric without anyone noticing. Her attention was focused more on her discomfort than on the argument. She already knew more about Vestalan and its problems than she cared to, anyway--this world held only sighs for her since Roger Corby had died. She was relieved that Dr. McCoy had decided he didn't need her in the station's infirmary. She preferred to leave this place. She'd have preferred not to return here at all, but a career on a starship precluded such choices: she went where duty dictated.

"No, for the tenth time, Kirk, my staff did nothing to offend the Hualans!" Gehres was sputtering, his voice cracking with unaccustomed shouting. He looked miserable in his wilting bureaucrat's tunic--the Hualans' crude sabotage of the station's air-coolers had been effective. "Nothing. They brought us the usual twenty coatls last month, we paid them the standard trade goods. Now, the coatls are gone, two of my people are dead, two missing, another injured, and the Federation sends you to torment me!"

"Mr. Gehres, I'm here to get at the facts and rectify the situation, if possible, and I can't do that if you're going to withhold information," Kirk accused.

Gehres was not a bureaucrat at heart, he was a good chemist who'd been staked out to languish in the draining heat of administrative tension. The humid sweat-box of Vestalan's ocean-saturated biosphere did him as little good: he yanked open his tunic's fiendishly high collar and threw himself into the nearest chair, devil take protocol.

"I've told you everything I know. There's some kind of revival of an old cult--a coatl cult," he wheezed. "If the bigwigs at Starfleet hadn't cut back my staff, there'd be a sociologist on top of the problem. As things stand, we may have to abandon the whole station. Can't take coatls without 'express permission of the planet's inhabitants', and the damned beasts don't seem to survive outside their biosphere. Can't make Derivative 249 without coatl venom. Can't treat pan-human neurotransmission disorders without D-249. Can't do a goddamned thing!"

"I'm aware of the significance of this project," Kirk said flatly. "My orders were quite explicit, Mr. Gehres: find the cork and pull it."

Gehres squinted up at Kirk dismally. "Captain, please…. I'm not your antagonist. And I'm not sitting on the cork."

Christine felt sorry for Gehres and not a little angry at Kirk's badgering. And she knew that if she didn't beam up to the ship's cool corridors soon, she might melt.

"Pardon me, sir," she interrupted, "but I know Lt. Commander Domberwicky, and I'm sure he'll reestablish his former rapport with the Hualans very quickly. May I suggest that we wait for his report?"

"Who's this Domberwicky?" Gehres snapped.

"One of my ship's socioanthropology staff," Kirk said. "He's had previous professional experience with the Hualans. I sent him out to appraise the situation this morning."

"Alone?"

"His professional opinion dictated it. I respect his judgment."

Gehres threw his hands up.

"They'll kill him! Didn't you see what happened to the last two emissaries I sent?"

Christine winced involuntarily, her mind drawn away on a tangent; she'd seen the Hualans' victims, gruesome sacrifices to some horrible ritual, their corpses contorted by the slow venom of Vestalan's priceless serpents. Only a few drops of the anti-venom could have saved those lives, but the station's supply had been stolen.

Ensign Chekov appeared at the doorway.

"Excuse me, Keptain, but it's almost sixteen-hundred. You're supposed to meet Commander Domberwicky. You esked me to remind you."

"Thank you, Ensign," Kirk answered. "How's Scotty coming on the damaged equipment?"

Chekov couldn't suppress a grin. "By hiss rate of cursink, sair, I don't think it's too serious."

The captain turned back to Gehres. "All right, Mr. Gehres, I believe you-- for the moment. I'll be back in an hour or so. Maintain tight security on the labs, and try to stay out of the way of the damage-repair parties, won't you?"

Chekov returned to his tasks, and Kirk gestured to Chapel, following her out of the stuffy office down the long furnace of corridor, and out into the clearing. There, the heat was still oppressive, but at least there was the prevailing breeze up off the great global ocean that kept the archipelagos livable. Kirk stopped and leaned against one of the airy ‘gav trees to wipe his streaming face. He noticed, then, that Nurse Chapel was standing at a formal, full attention.

"Something bothering you, Nurse?" he asked politely.

"Yes, sir," she said earnestly, "I thought--if you'll pardon my opinion, Captain--that you were rather hard on Mr. Gehres, sir."

Kirk blinked at her in surprise. "As a matter of fact, I was a regular son of a bitch," he admitted wryly. "Part of the job, I'm afraid. Do you know Mr. Gehres, Ms. Chapel?"

"No, sir, but I do know something about how perplexing things can get on this planet. I know how complicated and tentative the trade arrangements with the Hualans are, and I appreciate how--illogical--their behavior often seems."

"And you said you know Domberwicky," Kirk added, intrigued. "Is there some connection I'm missing?"

Chapel flushed. "Irvin was the station sociologist when I was last here. His methods may seem eccentric, but he really does understand and get along with the Hualans."

"Commander Domberwicky's record is distinguished," the captain agreed. "May I ask when you were on Vestalan before?"

The nurse hesitated. "Some years ago, I was a staff physician engaged in neurochemical research."

"Hmmmm. I didn't know you're a doctor!"

"It's a good background for becoming Head Nurse on a starship," she said, matching his smile.* She didn't add that this was where she'd worked as Roger Corby's assistant--where she'd fallen in love with him. Roger's work here, analyzing and improvising on the remarkable medical knowledge of the Hualans' long dead and lost civilizations, had made him famous. That fame, then, and his ideological zeal, had driven him to greater ambitions, and eventually, to his death.

 

* _This information is based on a statement made by Majel Barrett at the New York Star Trek Convention, February 1975._

 

Christine wanted to leave this place. It stirred feelings she'd rather not revive. "Request permission to beam back to the ship, now, sir," she asked.

"Sorry, Ms. Chapel, but I think I want you along at the rendezvous with Domberwicky. Your opinions could be useful," Kirk said apologetically. "And we're late already."

Christine shook herself out of her dismay and trotted after Kirk. "Where are we going, sir?"

"There's an inlet at the bottom of the path," he said. "Domberwicky took a powerraft and went over to the big island. Didn't want to risk beaming down there."

Christine caught up to the captain. The "path" they took was an obstacle course of razor-edged igneous extrusions and looping vines on an incline meant only for goats, but Vestalan's gravity was comparable to Luna's, and the humans moved in it lightly, leaping most of the obstacles. Still, some of the switch backs were treacherous. Christine caught herself cursing Domberwicky for not reporting in by radio until she remembered that the superstitious Hualans thought that the boxes that talked were bewitched.

Nearing the base of the mesa, Kirk and Chapel hopped the last rocks and ran down onto the black-grained beach. Several abandoned huts, raised on poles, sat in disrepair at the surf's edge, but no one was in sight. The ‘gav trees sighed in the wind and the waves sloshed the shore, but nowhere was there the sound of a powerraft.

"He's late," Kirk growled. "I knew he should have taken a communicator."

"Maybe he's around there," Christine suggested, pointing at an arm of the inlet that snaked out of sight behind the trees.

"We'll look."

Kirk led the way, staying on the packed sand at the water's edge. He ducked between the supporting poles of one of the huts.

With only the crackle of parting reeds, black-spotted ochre figures slipped down out of the rotting flooring and made a neat corral of bodies around Kirk and Chapel. Kirk spun around in momentary bewilderment and opened his mouth as if to say something, but he had no voice. Another Hualan blew a second dart into Kirk's torso, and the captain's legs collapsed under him, numbed.

Christine thought she was screaming and kicking for all she was worth, but her voice and limbs seemed to have a will of their own, or no will at all. She slumped face down in the wet sand and watched minute shore-shrimp scurrying to merge into the grains before the next wave's spreading sheath sucked them back into the froth. Nature went on. After what seemed like hours, Christine felt remote sensations of being tied, and a mildewed fiber bag was pulled over her head, shutting out the light. She was carried and dumped on a hard, pitching floor that must have been an outrigger's deck, but her deadened nerves registered no discomfort. She could hear the Hualans' low nasal voices around her, and recognized the characteristic mechto odor--the Hualans were drunk. Close by, someone was wheezing painfully, probably Captain Kirk.

The deck pitched more violently as the craft moved out of the cove and into the main currents. The Hualans began a soft chant with an obscure rhythm, and Christine noted with sleepy disinterest that whatever she'd been dosed with had heightened her non-tactile senses acutely. But in her terror and anger, her central thought was: Domberwicky told them where we'd be!

 

\----------

Christine had never associated cold with Vestalan: some unexplained phenomenon had melted the polar ice cap millennia ago, drowning most of the planet and its beings while the little world sweltered in a perpetual heat wave. But the stone floor on which the nurse sat, her hands lashed to a post behind her, was as cold and damp as a freshly dug grave. Captain Kirk's body heat radiated across to her a little, but the upright pole between them obstructed the comfort of physical contact.

She'd never imagined thirst on Vestalan, either, where only the mightiest mountain fastness had escaped the great inundation, but now her throat scratched with dryness. At least her blindfold was gone, though night had come and the cramped stone chamber was plunged in inky shadows cut sharply by patches of brilliant moonlight peering through wide chinks in the roof. The room was musty with antiquity. Christine remembered that contemporary Hualans lived in simple shacks built over the surf; these ruins were used only for religious purposes.

One of those religious rites must be occurring somewhere near; drunken, clamorous voices and clattering rhythms, raucous music, drifted into the improvised brig with fluctuating intensity.

Behind her, Christine felt and heard the captain squirming against his bonds. His knuckles jabbed into the small of her back, but the restraining vines were smeared with a sap that stiffened and tightened them hopelessly. Kirk kept struggling until his lacerated wrists convinced him that it was no use. His panting subsided, and he was silent.

"Mr. Spock will have located us on the ship's sensors by now," Christine offered hopefully.

More silence,

"Maybe," Kirk said finally. "It takes time, though."

"He'll be worried."

"Frantic," Kirk admitted, "--for a Vulcan."

"He'll find us."

"Eventually. But it's not as simple to rescue us as it seems. This is a hands-off world: no force or forceful display to be used for any reason."

"Can't he just beam us up out of here?"

"Use of the transporter where the possibility exists of its being witnessed by the Hualans, would be considered a 'forceful display.' Spock's only legal option will be to try to trade for us, if there's time."

"Mister Spock has broken the rules before," Christine said, then added wistfully, "for you."

Kirk made no answer to that. He shifted his weight, trying to find some more tolerable position in which to sit.

"I wonder what's become of Domberwicky?" he mused.

"I think I'd rather not know, sir, if it's all the same to you."

"I should have let you beam up to the ship," Kirk berated himself. "I'm sorry, Christine."

She did not answer, and they said nothing for the length of time it took a single bright star to rise and set in an overhead aperture. The clamor from outside filtered in more loudly for a few moments, then subsided again into a dull background roar.

"Any idea of what's going on out there?" Kirk asked.

"I think it's a ritual. The Hualans only get drunk for religious purposes, if I remember correctly," Christine answered shakily, There'd been screams of pain among the screams of delight in that last outburst of voices. Her imagination was threatening to run away at full tilt.

So, apparently, was Kirk's. "Christine... what else do you know about the goings-on at these ceremonies?"

She had to swallow twice to find her voice. "Only what I read in the official anthropological reports," she breathed.

"Yes," the captain said softly, "I read those, too."

Footsteps crunched in the gravel-strewn terrace outside the room and a torch was thrust through the portal, followed by dappled, pinto-skinned bodies. The Hualans, six of them, were armed with knives and sickle-shaped metal weapons unlike any of the usual Hualan artifacts. A woman, short, moonfaced and overweight, lowered the torch to illuminate Chapel's face and form. She fingered the uniform fabric at the nurse's sleeve, then leaned close as if inspecting Christine for possible ornaments or other souvenirs. Christine barely breathed. The odor of the Hualan's breath was strong enough to embalm a corpse, and there was a dangerous tone in the Hualans' amused conversation. But the woman pulled at the emblem on Chapel's uniform, and when it didn't tear away, she lost interest and walked around the post to gawk at Kirk.

The Hualan who'd inspected Christine ran her free hand over Kirk's body in an obscene manner, then made some comments that sent the others into a hysterical laughter which sounded, to Christine's human ears, more like severe hiccups. Kirk sat quietly and endured the humiliation. But when the portly Hualan reached for him a second time, he lashed out with his feet, knocking her smartly onto her backside.

For that, he took a beating. When the Hualans went back outside, Christine wriggled as far around the center pole as she could, twisting to try to have a look at the captain. He gasped with pain.

"Captain--Jim--lay your head back to slow the bleeding," she said, "Are you hurt badly?"

Kirk sniffed, his nose still streaming blood.

"No…  I'll be all right," he said soberly. "Don't these people have any redeeming qualities?"

"I've never known them to be cruel, before, except for the stories about cult rituals," she ventured. "Domberwicky said the rites must have changed; he said the Hualans are one of the gentlest, kindest peoples he'd ever worked with."

Kirk shook his head. "What would make the rituals change?"

"God knows. Maybe the yarrow sticks--or their local analog--didn't fall right."

Further speculation was prevented by the return of the Hualans. Kirk's tormentor was not among them. One piebald-faced male crouched in front of Christine and held his sickle-weapon at her throat. She got a good look at it--it looked like beaten gold. A weapon of gold would not keep an edge if used; such an implement would likely be used only in a seasonal rite. But it was sharp enough: the cold edge of it, touching her skin, made her flesh creep.

They were untying Captain Kirk. He offered no more resistance, but let them haul him up. They lashed his arms tightly behind his back again with fresh vines. Christine scrutinized him in the dancing torchlight and was relieved to see that he was only superficially damaged. For the moment.

The Hualans were talking excitedly, and they prodded Kirk toward the exit.

"If you get a chance to run, do it, don't---"

The crunch of a bludgeon ended Kirk's orders.  He crashed to his knees, stunned, and the Hualans dragged him outside. Only then did Christine's guard withdraw the blade from her windpipe. He giggled drunkenly and followed the others. She could hear Kirk's scraping footsteps, as they hauled him down an apparent slope. The guards at the threshold resumed their places, and relative quiet returned.

 

\----------

The shaft of sunlight stabbed through her closed eyelids, and Christine awoke, her neck cramped painfully. She looked around muzzily for a moment and came to full consciousness with a jerking awareness. Daylight! And from the angle of the light streaming into her eyes through the open doorway, it was late in the morning. She pushed herself up straight against the post and wriggled her numbed fingers, stretched the muscles in her shoulders and back as best she could. She had a brow-beating headache and her nose was clogged. Her throat was stripped with dryness.

Then she noticed how quiet it was: there were voices, still, but the clamor of the previous night was gone. The relative silence was ominous, as ominous as the howls of glee and pain she'd heard in the darkness, but she feared this more: her imagination could encompass what the noise might have entailed, but she had no idea at all what this dread quiet might mean. She strained her ears for some clue, and was rewarded with approaching footsteps. Many footsteps. She braced herself, for what she didn't know, gnawing the inside of her cheek with fright.

A brief flurry of voices erupted just outside, and a silhouette stepped through the sun-dazzled opening: Dornberwicky! Alive, unhurt, and unrestrained. He knelt beside her and began to wrench free the knotted vines that held her.

"Are you all right?" he asked solicitously. His prim mouth, pale squinting eyes and thin white hair made him seem the model of ineptitude.

"I think so," Christine blurted in relief. "When did you get here? Where's Captain Kirk? Why weren't you at the rendezvous---?"

Dornberwicky put a hand to her mouth, a gentle yet authoritative gesture.

"There isn't much time. I've made an ... arrangement ... with the Hualans for your freedom. You're to go straight to the powerraft at the bottom of the mountain and go back to the station," he told her, and helped her to her feet.

Christine groaned as she straightened, and rubbed her wrists clumsily to stimulate the circulation. Her overtaxed mind was more than willing to obey Dornberwicky's instructions, except that she couldn't help being worried about Captain Kirk. She resisted Dornberwicky's coaxing assistance toward the door.

"Irvin--wait. Isn't Captain Kirk coming, too?"

The anthropologist's seamed face pulled down into a frown. "Yes, yes, he's fine," Dornberwicky said quickly. "The captain's already back at the station. I'll explain everything later."

He was lying. Christine knew it instantly. One of Dornberwicky's greatest assets as an anthropologist and intercultural contact with aliens was his transparency: the man abhorred lying, and, as such, had simply never developed the skill. He was completely readable, and so was welcomed everywhere as a harmless envoy and an object of curiosity and amusement. His guilelessness made him appear somewhat of an eccentric among humans, but it was his unique brand of diplomacy among alien cultures, and for him, it worked.

And Christine knew he was lying. The implications knotted her stomach. She spun and clasped Dornberwicky's hands urgently. "Irvin, where's Captain Kirk?!"

Domberwicky winced. "He's at the station--"

Christine shook her head violently. "No, the truth!"

Undone, Dornberwicky groaned. He couldn't lie convincingly to strangers; no use with Christine Chapel, then. "It doesn't matter, Christine, we can't  help him. We're fortunate that they're willing to let you go. And you must go. Now. There may not be another chance."

Christine's mind whirled and threw out an image: Jim Kirk's comforting embrace. Where? Roger. Andrea and Roger dying in a blaze of phaser fire. And another image: what she knew now was Spock's first pon farr. She remembered Kirk's grey face, lifeless in the grip of the dangerous drug he'd risked to ensure Spock's life. She wasn't going to leave that man to the Hualans.

"Irvin," she growled, "I'm not budging until I know what's happened to Captain Kirk. I have to know."

Surprised at her vehemence, Dornberwicky literally squirmed under her stormy gaze. The resolve in her eyes would permit no deception. It was almost a relief to tell her.

"There's a ... ritual. It's like a game," he sighed, wrestling with words. "They love games. They even put bets on how long the sacrificial victim will last. How long he lives foretells, symbolically, how the tribe's fortunes will go in the next solar year.

"We can't help the captain, Christine. He's in the snakepit. He's probably dead, believe me. You must take this chance and leave here, save your own life. They've been drunk for days now, and it brings out the worst in them. Go, now, before they change their minds," he pleaded.

Stunned, Christine could only mumble, "What about you?"

"Oh, I'll be fine here, I'm safe. I'm like one of the family, they put up with me," he said, herding her toward the door again.

Christine filled up with a sudden loathing that galvanized her. She threw down Domberwicky's hands in disgust.

"I won't go," she flared, "not without the captain!"

"Impossible."

"I will not leave him here with those drunken animals," she vowed.

"Be reasonable, Christine," Domberwicky said desperately. "I think I'm close to working out the problem with the Hualans about the station. If you rock the boat now, we may lose our last chance at the galaxy's only source of D-249. Surely the many lives that depend on D-249 outweigh the scruples of your conscience or affections. In any case, the captain's beyond our help by now."

The nurse, so agitated that her facial muscles cramped, nearly spat in his face. Fleetingly, she wondered how a man could possess such a deep appreciation for any other culture, yet have so little insight into the values of his own. He was genuinely, innocently oblivious to her loyalty to Kirk. His singleminded attentions were solidly fixed on his original goal, the treaty, and there could be no diversions, no delays.

Her bitterness armed her for autonomous action. "All right, maybe Captain Kirk is dead, but I want to see for myself. And if you don't take me there right away, I'm going to grab that guard's weapon and start a fight," she threatened, meaning every word.

"You can't do that!"

"I will do it."

"You'll get us both killed!"

"I'll take a few of the captain's murderers with us," she said flatly.

"You're overwrought, Christine," the anthropologist groaned. He studied the nurse intently, weighing the alternatives. "All right," he gave in, "I'll see what I can do. I can't make any promises--they haven't let me see him either."

He strode to the doorway to talk to the guards outside.

"Irvin," she called after him, "either we see the captain, or there will be trouble, and that is a promise."

Domberwicky hesitated, then went out, and Christine looked around  the hewn stone room, selecting the cleanest corner in which to sit. She was bone-weary, as worn as she could ever remember. She questioned, for the first time, her compulsion to confirm Kirk's fate; Domberwicky was probably right, Kirk was surely dead. The thought wrung a quiet moan from her. But she could not leave this place until she was sure. She thought it was because she would not be able to face Mr. Spock, but she realized, now, that she would also not be able to live with herself.

 

\----------

Heat. Glare. Humidity. It was the litany of Vestalan from matins to vespers, every day. It had baked aspiration and civilization out of the Hualan culture. Now it went to work on Christine Chapel's resolve, broiling more of her compulsion out of her with every step under that noon sun. An impression of crowds around her made Christine force her squinting eyes open, and she realized there were Hualans all around where she walked, reclining on cloths or mats under impromptu ramadas of stacked tree fronds. The people laughed, shouted, pointed, sat up. They might have been on a picnic. Maybe, Christine thought, they are. There were many different ways to be devout.

Ahead of her loomed a very wide, circular pit lined with shaped stone. It was readily twice the diameter of the ship's bridge, and she immediately labeled it "the kiva", associating it with the Terran Anasazi cultural group, whose sacred places were similarly constructed, though usually roofed.

Christine walked toward the pit's edge, and the Hualans rolled out of her way cordially. She must have seemed like some goddess, or demon--blonde and tall and all of one pale skin tone, striding across the heat with a look of terrible sternness; but Christine was oblivious to the Hualans. Her eyes saw only into the kiva.

She stopped, gazing down the seven meters or so to the flagstone floor, and for that moment, she felt like she stood on the lip of hell. The coatls were there, maybe thirty of them. And Kirk was there. He was alive. He lay utterly still, on his side, with his arms bound in front of him, but he breathed. His skin was naked to the searing sun, and several coatls were coiled in the meager shade cast by his torso.

Every nerve in Christine demanded a scream. She spun away, and Domberwicky was there to grasp her arms. He restrained her tightly, but not so tightly as she restrained her horror. She was in control, and she thought furiously.

"We'll go now, Christine," Domberwicky said firmly.

"No, we can't," she breathed. Then, with more vigor, "You told me these people can't resist a bet. Is that true?"

"It's true. Now, come on ..."

"No. Wait. I want you to tell them that I'm going to make the bet of a lifetime, and they can share it …. Go ahead, tell them!"

"Blast it, woman --"

"Tell them exactly what I said, or I'm going to start shoving the nearest ones into the pit," she warned. "And you'll be next."

"You've lost your mind!"

"Maybe I have. Now tell them!"

He told them something. It must have been close enough to her intent, because the Hualans glanced up at her with renewed interest.

"Well, they want to hear the rest of it," Domberwicky said sickly, the sound of a man with his neck in a guillotine.

"Tell them that I will wager my life for Captain Kirk's," Christine said hoarsely. "Tell them that I will go into the pit, with only a knife, and bring him out, without either of us being bitten."

Domberwicky blanched and his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. He could barely make his tongue work words.

"You're completely insane!" he croaked. "You're a raving lunatic! You haven't a chance in hell down there!"

Calm, Christine waited out the reaction. She felt a unique serenity, having committed herself to this task. She didn't pretend that the risk wasn't titanic, but neither was it impossible. She listed her advantages quietly:

"I've handled coatls before; I respect them, Irvin, but I'm not afraid of them," she said. "I’m strong, and I'm very quick, and the light gravity gives me an added advantage. Besides that, the snakes are hot--most of them will stay in the shadows around the edges of the pit. I believe, with luck, that I can get the captain out, without being bitten."

      The anthropologist's shock had spent itself; he had no more resources with which to cajole, argue, or insist. It was clear to him that Chapel was determined to suicide, and that he could do nothing, short of tackling her physically, to stop her. And, he admitted to himself, she could probably whip him if he tried that, too.

"You're sure you want to try this?" he sighed miserably. "You realize that Kirk's already been bitten."

"I saw the symptoms," she said. "There may still be time."

Several Hualans were tugging impatiently at Domberwicky's trouser legs, demanding attention. Domberwicky gave Christine one long, final look of resigned pain, and turned back to the Hualans. He would retrieve as much of the treaty as he could, whether Christine lived or died.

The response to Christine's proposal was a pandemonium of cheers, laughs, and frantic betting. Christine felt herself the object of a thousand eyes, being measured in every conceivable way. Some of the Hualans looked at her with visible approval, now: they had bet on her--a long shot--and stood to take big winnings if she survived. She almost laughed: she had every intention of surviving. She smiled back at the few faces that smiled at her.

Domberwicky finished parlaying with a clutch of aged Hualans, and turned back to Christine with a battle of conflicting emotions on his round face. "They'll let you have a knife," he told her. "I got that much for you. But you'll have to strip nude; they don't want any margin of safety. If you get bitten, they want to know it. And if you do get bitten, they won't let either you or the captain out of the pit alive."

She stared at him for a moment before her mind clicked back into gear.

"I agree," she acceded. She looked around at the sea of near-nude Hualans, shrugged mentally, and pulled her uniform off over head. She stripped off the rest of her clothes, and strode back to the pit's edge. Someone eagerly handed up a chipped-stone knife, glassy black with a coral handle, and she hefted it. Her hand curled around it comfortably.

She began to walk the perimeter of the pit, choosing a place from which to leap down. The babble of voices died away, and the Hualans scrambled for sitting room near the edge.

Christine's skin cringed under Vestalan's ruthless sun, nearly overhead. As she'd predicted, most of the coatls in the kiva had slunk to the shadows near the east wall. Those shadows would disappear in another twenty minutes, and the nasty-tempered serpents would start roaming around, seeking other shade. But for now, they were out of her way. Most of them.

She stopped at the north wall and looked down. This was the best place. Only four coatls were between her and Kirk, here, and she might avoid a few of them, with luck. Two coatls still lay in Kirk's shadow, but she would have to deal with them as best she could, if she got that far.

Poised, she jumped.

She landed hardly a meter from the closest coatl. The slate-eyed creature eyed her suspiciously, coiling its long black body into lazy loops that could spring out in stinging death. Christine crouched where she'd landed, studying the beast and planning her strategy.

This isn't a game, she reminded herself coldly. I could be dead soon. And this isn't a tranquilized, caged animal, either. There are no stunners here, and no wire loop restrainers. Only my stone knife. Her stomach twisted with fear: good, healthy fear that would make her careful. But her hands and knees threatened to overreact--she felt suddenly weak, and shaky, dangerously shaky. Despite the heat, her skin prickled with chills. Some part of her was screaming for her not to move, to stay in that tiny space of safety and never move; to move was to die.

To stay is to die, she countered with her intellect. With mock steadiness, she stalked the nearest coatl.

The serpent flung itself at her before she'd calculated, but she reacted without thinking, twisting out of its path, with her free hand behind its ugly flaired head, pressing the fleshy head against the flagstone, pinning it. The tail end looped up around her restraining hand, a full meter of powerful tail, and had the coatl been a Terran creature, it would have wrenched her arm from its head. But its muscles were accustomed to less gravity, and it lacked the strength of its Terran analog.

Christine held the writhing animal for a long, paralyzed moment of blanked mind before she realized what she'd done, and must do. Instinct alone had guided her, but now, she took the knife and mechanically sliced off the coatl's head, pitching it far away from her bare feet. The animal's brownish blood sprayed her legs. She tugged its still-lashing body from her arm.

Above her, the Hualans cheered and cursed, but she was already considering the next animal, a great-grandmother of a serpent, with a fleshy head the size of a duck's egg, It was, by far, the longest snake in the kiva. Christine began to crawl up on it, the professional part of her reluctant to destroy such a gigantic source of D-249. Her mind was obsessed with trivia, and she struggled to clear her thoughts for the contest. The whole situation seemed dreamlike, not quite real. She had to insist, over and over, that her full attention stay on what she was doing.

The coatl was huge, but its movements were sluggish. Probably, it had gotten too much sun in that exposed place, or it would have slithered into the diminishing shadows. Coatls were creatures of the twilight hours. Christine killed the big one almost casually.

She caught her breath and moved deliberately on the third serpent, when the air was suddenly filled with flying gravel: threatened by her successes, the Hualans who had bet against Christine were pelting the coatls with stones. They drove several snakes back into the sun, toward the center of the pit.

Almost growling, Christine pinned the third coatl, but instead of beheading it, she flung it with all her might into the crowd. Screams exploded from above, but she couldn't see where she'd thrown the animal. After a few moments, the screams stopped. Someone had apparently dispatched the snake. But no more stones were thrown.

The fourth coatl obligingly snaked away when Christine approached, in no mood for confrontation. Which left only the two animals still coiled by Kirk.

For the first time since she'd entered the kiva, Christine actually looked at Kirk. He lay as he'd lain, on his side, in a position nearly facing her. His eyes were open, but glazed, and he didn't seem aware of her. Where he wasn't sunburned, his flesh was grey, and his hair was matted with sweat. He was in pain, but he suffered in silence, barely breathing. She noticed his feet, then, and grimaced: the soles were punctured with thick thorns. It seemed the Hualans made sure their sacrificial oracles didn't run away.

The two coatls in Kirk's shadow presented an enormous problem; one was looped partly across Kirk's arm near his chest, the other lay in the shade by his hip. Coaxing them to coil and strike out, so near to him, was out of the question--there was no room to maneuver, and the slightest movement on Kirk's part could send the fangs into his helpless body.

There was no alternative. Christine knelt just out of range of the animals' farthest possible strike, and waited. The sun had slipped past the zenith, and the coatls in Kirk's shadow had lost that shadow. They must move soon. She hoped.

The sound of scales skittering across stone behind her startled Christine, and she turned her head sharply. She almost laughed in surprise and gratitude: the serpents which had hidden in the shade of the east wall in the morning were seeking new shadows, but all of them kept to the walls of the pit as they searched. After several long minutes, they discovered the meager shadows of the west wall. There was a brief series of snaky confrontations while the territorial pecking order was sorted out, then the animals settled down to sleep, each in its own little defined circumference of shape.

The smaller, darker of the two coatls near Kirk was stirring. Christine stayed still, watching it, waiting. Waiting. Then she realized that Kirk was looking at her, actually seeing her. He looked bewildered. At any moment, he might speak, or lift his head, or shift his legs. Instant death, though the dying would take its time.

"Captain, don't move!" Christine whispered. "Stay still, don't move a muscle. Our lives depend on it. Lie quietly and close your eyes."

He might not have understood her. He didn't close his eyes, but he didn't move, either. His breathing picked up a little. The darker coatl on his arm had had enough; it slid down onto the hot stones and slithered away toward the west wall.

The final coatl showed no sign of noticing that its spot against Kirk's thigh was becoming uncomfortable. But Kirk was. He moaned and shifted slightly. The coatl coiled up like a spring, agitated. Kirk, delirious, pulled his arms toward his chest, groaning. The coatl reared up, vibrating in the curious vanguard to its strike.

There could be no safety margin; Christine sprang at the snake, flicking the black-glass knife in an arc. Drawn to the broad motion, the coatl struck, catching the blade with its fangs and knocking it out of Christine's hand. She screamed, but in the same instant, instinctively caught the serpent behind the head to pin it. It was much more powerful than she'd expected, and it encircled her arms so that she could not throw it. She had no weapon. Its tail lashed and looped powerfully, and she had to cling to it with both hands, holding its fangs away from her. No way to kill it! Desperately, she pounded it down against the stone floor. Again, she smashed it down, and the snake thrashed wildly. Then, the third time, something gave. Blood and green venom splattered over her hands. She obliterated the remains of the animal's skull on the flagstone, and threw its squirming body as far as she could. Breathless, she dropped to her elbows, and stayed there, hunched over, gasping. It was done.

The Hualans had gone wild. Never had they seen such an entertainment; even the losers were jubilant, for no one was known who could handle coatls outside of the traps in which they were caught.

But to Christine, the celebration was remote noise. She was exhausted as she had never been. It was a supreme effort to push up. Somehow, she managed to get her arms under Kirk's torso, and lift him, lighter in this gravity, onto her shoulder in a graceless "fireman's carry". She stumbled to the east wall of the kiva, which was clear of coatls now. As she lifted Kirk toward the reaching hands above, she glanced up--and into the apprehensive face of Mr. Spock. The Vulcan got a grip under Kirk's arms and pulled him up out of the pit. Other hands helped Christine out onto the sunblasted heath.

McCoy was there, too, huddled with Spock over the captain and surrounded by red-shirted security guards. Kirk's head lolled on Spock's knees. It would be close--they should get the man on life support, get him to the ship, until a new batch of antivenom could be prepared. She wanted to say that, but the world of Vestalan was drowning her senses, full of frenzied, piebald faces and waving arms and colored cloths and dizzy black spots. Someone was wrapping a blanket around her. It was Domberwicky, grinning with a foolish, astonished smile.

"When'd Spock--?"

"Right after you went into the pit. He'd have gone in himself, but the noise would have thrown off your concentration. He had to wait it out with the rest of us. But, my God, woman, you did it!"

"I did it," she agreed numbly. Those black spots were spinning in on her, but at the center of the vortex she focused on Spock and McCoy, desperation embodied, so close, Kirk grey under his bruises, close, save him, I'm a nurse, no, a doctor, too, I can help, have to assist ...

Domberwicky barely caught her as she collapsed.

 

\----------

Christine woke to coolness and antiseptic smells: home. She hummed to herself a little.

"She's coming around ..." Dr. McCoy's voice was saying.

Who was coming around?

"Christine?"

"Um," she answered, and went back to sleep anyway.

"Well, I guess she deserves the rest," McCoy said reluctantly, turning to Mr. Spock. "Doesn't matter much when she finds out, does it?"

"Does what matter?" a weak voice demanded from the next bed.

"Now you really should be asleep!" McCoy grumbled, checking Kirk's overhead monitor-panel.

"Spock--what's happened?" Kirk insisted.

"Lieutenant Commander Domberwicky's new orders just came through from Starfleet, sir, and his request for temporary assignment to Vestalan has been approved," the Vulcan reported.

"Let's hope he's successful," Kirk wished.

"It appears that he has the situation well in hand," Spock informed. "According to Domberwicky's report, the Hualan high priests are interpreting your unprecedented escape from the coatl ritual as an omen of perpetual good fortune for the tribe, provided they maintain friendly relations with the botanical collections station. A most logical deduction, under the circumstances."

"And Gehres has D-249 on the production line again," McCoy added. "Thanks to good old human stubbornness."

Spock cocked an eyebrow. "I would have phrased it, 'thanks to ingenuity and sound logic', Doctor."

"You would."

"What's so important about this that you'd want to wake Ms. Chapel to tell her?" Kirk interrupted.

"Starfleet is awarding Ms. Chapel with a commendation for courage in the Vestalan affair, Captain," Spock told him. "An unusual honor."

"For an unusual woman," McCoy prodded.

Spock stared at McCoy inscrutably. "Indeed. A most extraordinary woman."

  


_(_ _Revised_ _and reprinted from Universal Transmitter #1)_


End file.
